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Tuesday, January 31, 2017

I expect most people reading this blog know me from the Women in Translation project, or #WITMonth. Throughout that project, I have argued that a huge step in improving the abysmal state of translation - and women in translation in particular - must be in increasing awareness. I have argued that when people are aware of a problem, they are halfway to solving it.

This argument becomes murky in a world populated with "alternative facts" and outright misinformation. When truth itself becomes a question, does awareness of a problem mean anything?

The past few days and weeks have seen turbulence in all directions. I have often found myself speechless, incapable of even comprehending how quickly things have fallen apart. I have found words almost impossible to come by. Yet there has also been a strong backlash, one driven not by awareness but of action. "We're done being aware of the problem," these protests seem to say. "Now we're going to tear it down."

Awareness serves a critical purpose in this resistance. Without it, there would simply be no-one protesting. It is much simpler to accept a broken world if you never know/acknowledge that it is broken. This is true of all activism, and indeed is often its limiting factor. Why should someone protest that "black lives matter" if they don't know that a horrifying imbalance exists between the way white and black Americans are treated by police? Why should someone protest a lack of women in STEM if they don't realize that women go through years and years of social conditioning and at-times outright discrimination that prevents the field from being properly integrated? Or to use an example closer to home: Why should someone care about the women in translation problem if they've never even heard that such a problem exists?

Large or small, major or insignificant, activism is built on the back of awareness. On education. On exposure to different voices and ideas. But awareness only sets the stage. Awareness makes it possible for activism to go forward, and go forward it must.